The opening paragraph of Kevin Power’s new novel, A Shout in the Ruins, is perhaps the finest beginning to a book I’ve read since Flannery O’Conner blew open the universe in the first paragraph of The Violent Bear It Away. Like that gem, Powers’ opener is all mood and tantalizing hooks that spark a thousand […]
The title promises more than it delivers. Illumination and Night Glare, the unfinished autobiography of Carson McCullers, purports to be a chronicle of the artistic process, giving us insight into the inspirations (illumination) and trials (night glare) of McCullers’ life. There is some of that in this slight book, but it retains its interest […]
The following review was originally published on The Englewood Review of Books and is republished with permission. The author is Heartlands editor, Alex Joyner. What if questions of human sexuality are not something that the United Methodist Church (UMC), like other mainline Protestant denominations, have to settle and get past, but rather are the foundation on which the […]
The cover of Christy, Catherine Marshall’s 1967 work of Christian fiction, has stared at me from a thousand church library shelves over the years. The original paperback version shows a young woman in early 20th-century dress seemingly dancing through a mountain meadow like Julie Andrews in the Alps. Catherine Marshall created Christy as a tribute […]
In the spirit of a broken clock being right twice a day, let me just say that one of Job’s friends got it right about dreams. Elihu, the fourth and youngest of Job’s blowhard companions who sought to “console” him after his tragedies, says something in chapter 33 that has always seemed just right to […]
A word of thanks and best wishes to all the friends of Heartlands who have supported this labor of love in 2018. We’ve grown this year with more views and visits. The top posts reveal a lot of interest (and probably anxiety) about where the United Methodist Church is headed in 2019. But look down […]
This used to be America. This rural landscape I walk through, drive through, every day is what American dreamers used to look to as the source of our national ideals. Field workers and farmers were the backbone of our strength. “Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass […]
It’s Advent! In liturgically-oriented churches, tables and pulpits are draped in purple. (Or perhaps a dark shade of blue, which to my mind is a nefarious invention of the liturgical-industrial complex.) Four-candled wreaths tick off the Sundays before Christmas. In homes, Advent calendars adorn walls. And yet so much is missing. “I have never seen […]
Warning: United Methodist inside baseball ahead. One of the strongest selling points for the One Church Plan, (and one that I’ve made), is that it takes off the table the contentious, divisive debate over LGBTQ inclusion and allows us to focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world—the stated mission […]
It’s difficult to choose the best ‘best read.’ One of my criteria, (to add once again to the list I outlined at the beginning of this countdown), is that if the book sticks with me in ways that feed my imagination and my own writing…if my world feels larger for having read the book…it has […]
